Local Heroes 2006

Boise Weekly's Tribute to a Few of the Good'ns

We've been putting out Local Heroes issues at Boise Weekly since long before anyone on the current staff showed up on the front doorstep begging for work. But the issue has changed plenty since its first incarnation.

Back in 1996, the first Local Heroes issue gathered 12 notable individuals under the heading, "A pause to say thanks and be proud." The issue was put out in late November and had--ha!--an actual photograph of someone featured in the issue on the cover with plenty of words in a delightful lime-green holiday font.

By last year, the number of heroes had been cut down to six, their stories were told in much greater length, the cover was a large, abstract painting of the number two and we published it in the second week of August.

I like to think this is because August 12 is "Middle Child Day," and middle children are exponentially more likely to accomplish heroic deeds than those shady characters on the "oldest" and "youngest" fringe. Not that my sisters would know anything about that.

But I digress. This year, we decided to combine old and new by revisiting a few heroes from our initial leap into hero-dubbing, while still adding a few new names to the illustrious scroll. Not surprisingly, given the devotion these original heroes had for what was a very different Boise, many of the original picks were still in town. A few were even still doing the same deeds we spotlighted them for the first time around. And while we didn't have the space to bring all 12 back into print, we have to mention them, because we remain grateful for all of the direction Boise's past heroes have given to bring this city to its vibrant and promising present. We can only hope that 10 years from now, our own contributions stand up as well as those of Tom Bray, Lisa Engleman, Donna and Harold Conn, Amy Kleiner, Safet, Sead, Zehra and Ela Miljkovic, Sue Pisani and Arun Raha.